


Isn't It Beautiful

by FieryPen37



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e01 Broken, F/M, Introspection, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FieryPen37/pseuds/FieryPen37
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Curse breaks, and Rumplestiltskin is confronted by his fears and failings</p>
            </blockquote>





	Isn't It Beautiful

Isn’t It Beautiful the Way We Fall Apart?

 

The Lion We Cage

 

The cell was always cold; a formless cold without the texture of an autumn wind, or the taste of snow in the air. It stood, five paces by eight, with a narrow bench serving as a bed. Its edges were blunted by rubber and there were no linens. Linens could be fashioned into nooses, shoes laces into garrotes. There was no end to human creativity, she mused, or the depths of desperation. In the right hands, or to the wildest eyes, even the porcelain toilet was hard enough to drown out voices if you hit your head on it hard enough.

As a result, even her bodily functions were monitored by remorseless eyes, body bundled between hard hands and white. White scrubs, white gloves, endless white tiles, little white paper cups that held the only color in the world: pills. A serene round blue, a little kernel of sunny yellow, or a two-toned capsule of red and orange. They all did the same thing: they made the world stretch and soften, muted words and blurring shapes.  She hated the pills. She couldn’t think under their suffocating embrace. But they checked, when she mimed swallowing, sometimes poking the pockets of her cheeks or under her tongue with a flat white tool. If they found the pills, then they resorted to shots. A quick, hot poke with a needle, a deeper, choking nowhere.

So she took the milder pills and they left her in peace in the cold cell with only the uppity _tap tap tap_ of purposeful heels, or the rhythmic hush of a pushed broom to sing her to sleep. The faint hum of the glaring lights—white, of course—shut off and left only the slanting moonlight, pared and shredded by the reinforced glass into a lattice of tiny diamonds. The moon’s soft light was the only white she liked. There had been pain under its softness, she thought, a shred of a memory, maybe. Harder, darker cells with bars and chains, endless white tallies in groups of five marking untold days. The woman was the same. A beauty without soul, like a black diamond. Always smiling her dripping red smile, peeking through the metal slot in her door, probing with dark, gloating eyes.

She stayed where she was, arms wrapped around her upraised knees, living inside her own head. Inside was a nowhere too, an ocean in shades of white and black, boundless and without memory. Emotion and thought, intelligence and conviction, she had, but it bland and baseless without the root of identity. _Dissociation_ , the nurses and doctors tutted, jumbled together with frightening phrases like _unfit for socialization, unstable condition, quarantine_.  Crazy? She wasn’t crazy. But then, didn’t all crazy people think they were sane? That fear haunted the long, white days.

In the night there was yearning, a pain more acute than hunger, a sharp ache in her loins, a deeper echo in her chest. Echo, yes that was a good word for it. The reflection of a sound. This was a reflection of a feeling, a deep and powerful one that reached for her in her dreams. She cherished this fragment of insight, cradled it and turned it this way and that to admire it through hundreds of white paper of cups and soft moonlight. Until the familiar screech of a key in the lock woke her. She tensed, ready to fight the needle’s sting. She’d done nothing wrong.

The man wore white, but he held out his hand.

“Come with me.” Leave? Could they? Or would it be more needles, more pills, endless white? She found her voice.

“Who are you? Why are you doing this?” There was a lilt to her speech, Australian, the nurse had said. A place she’d never seen, another blank white space in her head.

So the man named Jefferson told her about Mr. Gold, who could protect her from Regina with her red smile. He could stop the pills, the sticks, but, Jefferson stressed, Mr. Gold must know that Regina locked her up. Locked up, imprisoned. She wasn’t crazy, like the nurse said. Joy coursed through her, a heady, glittering rush. _Sane_ , rational, healthy.  Her echo hummed at the sound of the name. _Mr. Gold._ It meant something to her reflection.

_Find Mr. Gold._

 

xxx

The world outside dazzled her. The sky loomed brilliant and boundless, even with the sun shrouded by a thick crust of grey clouds. She sucked down breath after breath of frosty air, laden with scents of oily food, burned rubber and decomposing trash. She waded through the sea of unbroken asphalt latching onto a sign emblazoned with a street name. Main Street. Surely she’d find Mr. Gold on _Main Street_. She passed shops, cars, streetlights, but no people. Her shoes fit poorly, her right heel felt tender, her entire body quivering from unaccustomed exertion. At last, she stumbled upon another sign.

**Mr. Gold**

Pawnbroker

& Antiquities Dealer

She hauled at the door, hearing the faint tinkle of a bell. Hungrily her eyes roved over the shadowy, cluttered shop. So many colors and textures. Her fingers itched to trace the glass, feel the grain of the wood. She breathed deep, smelling wood, old books, furniture polish and the faint trace of something spicy, aftershave? _Focus,_ she thought. She heard furtive sounds behind the dense curtain patterned with rich gold leaves. She parted it, finding a man with his back to her. Slender, clad in a dark suit. Long hair.

“Excuse me, are you Mr. Gold?” she asked.

“Yes I am, but I’m afraid the shop’s closed.” The voice shivered through her, like fingers strumming a chord on an instrument. A rich, rolling accent, a deep, soft voice. His face, lean and foxlike, dark eyes. She frowned. He didn’t look happy to see her. He looked . . . he looked . . . she could scarcely concentrate with her echo screaming like it was.

“I was uh, told to find you and tell you that Regina locked me up. Does that mean anything to you?” she could scarcely decipher the meaning herself. Who was Regina and why was it so important that she be locked away? She wasn’t crazy, just lost. She couldn’t hurt anybody, or hold a grudge. She didn’t even know her own _name_. Mr. Gold didn’t answer; he just approached her in slow, fluid steps, dark eyes hungrily roving, lips parted. She watched, perplexed. He hurt to look at. She didn’t know why. He touched her, a halting squeeze on her shoulder.

“You’re real. You’re alive. She did this to you.” His voice scarcely had enough breath behind it to make a sound, trembling with a wealth of aching feeling.

“I was told you’d protect me.”  His face seemed to crumple inward; he exhaled a shuddering breath, as if she’d punched him in the gut. He flung his arms around her stiff, unresisting form. Enveloped by the spice of his aftershave, the soft fabric of his suit against her cheek, his heart beating against hers, she was overwhelmed, disoriented and above all, confused. He _knew_ her. Her echo howled at deafening volume. They knew each other. But she couldn’t _remember_.

“Yes, yes I’ll protect you.”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” _Tell me, please. Tell me my name. Tell me who I am._ Her words hurt him, she could see the flinch, see sadness cloud those lovely dark eyes.

“No, but you will,” he rasped. 

 

She followed him. Followed him into the sleek black Cadillac as he drove into the forest to do ‘something very important.’ She enjoyed the red velvet seats, the heat curling around her toes, the low snarl of a powerful engine. So much to see, so much _color_ and movement and texture.

“Come with me,” Mr. Gold said, yanking the Cadillac into park at the base of a trail. She frowned at him, perplexed. Why would a man in a three piece suit decide to go on a hike in the middle of the afternoon? She obeyed, because she didn’t know what else to do. She obeyed because her echo couldn’t bear to be more than three paces away from him. It _purred_ when he was close.

They began to walk, and she enjoyed the moss and roots beneath her feet, the scent of pine needles and loamy earth, the sound of birds singing and creak of wind through branches. He moved beautifully, Mr. Gold, even with his cane, he navigated the uneven ground very well. There was an uncomfortable itch between her shoulder blades, a pressure building in her head with every step she walked. It had been a long time since the last white paper cup, maybe her body was only confused? Her ears popped, static electricity singing through her body and—

She stopped. In a blinding, painful rush of color and feeling, memory rushed in, the Curse’s dam obliterated in her mind. She . . . she was _Belle_. Belle, lady of Avonlea, daughter of Maurice, king of the Marshlands and . . . and the Dark One, Rumplestiltskin was her True Love. The Evil Queen had separated them, locked her away in a tower for _years_. The mere _echo_ of what they had had was enough to wake her with tears still wet on her cheeks. Tears filled her eyes, both for all of her remembered pain and also for the gods’ cruelty. Why was the first thing she saw with her own eyes her True Love walking away from her?

“Wait,” she said, a weak thread of sound.

“No, no, we’re very close,” he said.

“Rumplestiltskin, wait.” He stopped at that. Fear marred her joy, there was still so much left unsaid: the pain of his disbelief in her love, her own foolish impulsivity in kissing him, the soul-deep ache at seeing the human face she’d only once glimpsed. Had he found someone else to break his curse? Still, Belle couldn’t stand one more second apart from him. She’d accept banishment forever if he’d only let her say: “I remember. I love you.” His embrace was like coming home, like sanity and sunlight.

“Yes. Yes. And I love you too.”               

 That was all that mattered.

 

xxx

 _After a while, she threw herself off the tower. She died._ Regina would pay for each of her brazen lies, she would pay in blood and pain. And even when Rumple drew the last of her agony from her body, it wouldn’t be enough. Nothing could repay decades of cold and isolation, of robbing Belle of her memories for twenty-eight years. This was the burning thought that carried him with the wraith’s medallion to where Regina was held and scourging her with its mark. When he heard the trapped souls wail, he thought it was only justice to add Regina’s to their chorus.

But his Belle, she was finer made than he, a soul embodying good in its purest form: compassion, empathy, her divine gift to see the pure soul of a being. It was the same quality that let her fall in love with him. Discreetly as she stormed out of his shop into the howling black, he cast a protection spell on her. Even if she left him forever, she would be _safe_. Rumplestiltskin felt old and tired and broken, so he did as he had done for centuries to forget the clamor of memories, he spun.

The bell chimed and he ignored it. If another of the Charmings barged in and demanded answers, he wouldn’t be responsible for the additions to the snail populace. He turned and found Belle, looking utterly delectable in her grey dress, her hair falling in clean, luxurious waves. He blessed the powers of this world that deemed it fashionable to see a woman’s bare legs. Belle’s were a miracle.

Rumplestiltskin chose not to dwell on her near-panic attack when he’d left her to bathe. The white bathroom had reminded her of the cell beneath Storybrooke’s charming hospital where orderlies had sprayed her with a cold hose. He’d kill them. String them up by their entrails and make them watch their blood _drip drip_ down that same drain. Dripping wet and naked, she’d clung to him, soaking his suit coat and then his pocket square with her tears. And she _wondered_ why he wanted to murder the woman responsible? He was still a monster, an old dragon that didn’t deserve love, much less a glorious creature like Belle. When he fell for her the first time, he’d set her free. She’d returned with a basket of straw and a kiss. He rejected her love and threw her to the she-wolf that had imprisoned her. She deserved freedom in truth. Let him keep the chipped cup to remind him of her.

“You must leave because despite what you hope, I am still a monster,” he said. Her smile was like dawn and roses.

“Don’t you see? That’s exactly the reason I have to stay.”

 

“It’s not the Dark Castle, but it suits me just fine,” he said, unlocking the door of his rambling pink mansion. Belle trailed after him as he showed her each room, cluttered with curiosities from two realms. He noticed her gently grazing fingertips, seeking textures and her wide eyes drinking in colors and shapes. Restless for stimulation after decades of bland white.

“It’s beautiful. Much easier to keep a housekeeper, I imagine,” she said, a familiar spark in her blue eyes and the coy tilt of her rosy mouth letting him in on the joke. Rumple shrugged.

“I never bothered. Couldn’t find any with the stomach for bloody aprons.” The lilt of his voice swung toward the Dark One’s sneers, but she laughed anyway. Strange girl. Strange enough to joke with him about how he’d once nearly tortured a man to death. 

He guided her upstairs and pointed out the spare rooms, and his own. Silence fell between them. Rumple folded his hands over his cane, hiding white knuckles and sweaty palms. The dazed shock of her return was beginning to ebb, and the hunger and loneliness of decades was beginning to hum and growl. Their blindingly beautiful kiss in the forest played on a loop in his mind. But as ever, his crippling insecurity and cowardice surged up. A man like Charming or Jones could invite a woman to their bed and be confident in the reply. If Belle refused his offer, it would destroy whatever shreds of pride he had left. He limped toward one of the spare rooms, as lavishly appointed and decorated as every other room.

“You must be exhausted. You could sleep here. I’ll find you something to sleep in,” he blurted, interrupting her perusal of an original Titian. She blinked at him, her face inscrutable. Decades of cells had taught her how to hide her heart behind a mask. In the Dark Castle her smiles, her scowls, her frowns, and smirks had been treasures for him to pour over in the quiet of his room.

“Ok,” she said softly. Rumple nodded, limping into the bedroom and riffling through a drawer. His curse persona held a penchant for silk pajamas and an obsession for quality, thus the deep blue long-sleeved shirt and pants felt cool and slippery as Rumple wadded them up and thrust them at her.

“Thank you,” she said with that beautiful sunny smile, though he could see the shadow isolation had wrought in her blue eyes. His hand twitched at his side, yearning to touch her. Offer comfort, at least. But he was weak, and he’d missed her so much. However innocently they lay in bed, or even in the same fucking _room_ , he wouldn’t be able to check the urge to touch, just to make sure she was real.  

“Rest well, then. I’ll be down the hall if you need anything,” he said.

“Goodnight, Rumple.” Her words chased him into his hiding place, the spacious room seeming to creak and yawn with dusty loneliness. Rumple heaved a sigh, feeling every one of his years. Thousands of deals, curses, power and magic spanning dozens of realms, and he was still the same lame coward without even the courage to embrace his True Love. He bathed and climbed into his bed, knowing no matter his weariness that sleep would not find him. Not with _Belle_ in the next room, not with the Curse broken and Bae so close at last. So as the clock ticked away the hours, he heard his door creak open. He sat up, peering into the darkness.

“Rumple?” her voice was small and warbling, her face hidden by the curtain of her sleep-tousled curls.

“What is it, sweetheart? Can’t sleep?”

“A nightmare.” His poor beloved Belle, she had so much to terrorize her sleep: locked doors, chains, a dark queen with her dripping red smile, even his own snarling face.

“Oh,” he said, and cursed himself. Where were his golden words, the deal-maker’s deft twist of phrase? When it counted, he couldn’t comfort her.  Belle, endearingly engulfed by the sapphire blue pajamas, tiptoed across chilly floorboards to the far side of the bed. Her hand fluttered at her side.

“May I?” she said, gnawing on her lower lip, eyes lost in shadow.

“O—Of course,” he said, sweeping the blanket aside so she could nestle in the warmth underneath. Rumple’s old heart thudded in his chest, that dried up, weary organ quivering at being so close to her. He would deny her nothing.

The kiss was almost an accident. Belle draped herself against his side, burying her face against the side of his throat, as she had after they’d kissed in the forest, alight with joy.

“Belle?” he breathed, words bottling in his throat, pleas for forgiveness, words of explanation,  promises of a new and better future.

“Hmm?” she asked, peeling back a few millimeters. So close, so warm and _alive_. Alive, and looking at him with those luminous eyes. The moonlight polished her lush beauty to an ethereal sheen. _Beautiful_. Impulse— _longing_ —urged him to kiss her, a soft, worshipful thing of apology. Her smothered sound vibrated against his lips, her cool hand cupping his cheek. Rumple broke the contact as heat began to pool and throb.

“What was your dream?” he asked to distract them both. He needed air, he needed space, _gods_ he needed _Belle_. A subtle shiver raced over Belle and she subsided next to him, nuzzling close. His arms felt like a poor consolation, but she seemed content enough. Restless fingers trailed through her hair, a greedy touch while she was distracted. If he could not spin, winding the living silk of her hair through his fingers was a worthy substitute; he forgot all else.

“A white room,” she whispered, her breath curling against his skin, “The door wouldn’t open. I called for you and you didn’t come.” Grief roared in the last few syllables and Rumple’s soul howled in response. His grip tightened. He struggled to a sitting position, pulling her with him. He framed her beautiful face between his hands, smoothing away the tears with his thumbs.

“Oh Belle. She told me you were _dead_. She told me your association with me had tainted you, that your father had you tortured and then you killed yourself rather than let the abuse continue. It . . . it sounded so much like you, deciding your own fate. Belle, if I had known, if there been any hint of you, I would have torn the world apart to find you.” Belle’s expression crumpled, her lips turning into his palm. Gods, how she had suffered, thinking that he had _ignored_ her pleas for help.

“I know. Oh Rumple, deep down I knew that.”

They clung to each other until the tears were spent. Her hair smelled of the shampoo in his guest bathroom, scented with pears and vanilla.

“Are you hungry?” he asked abruptly. Belle gave a wet little snuffle into his shoulder.

“A little,” she said. Rumple sank back on his heels, his ankle protesting.

“What would you like? I could make something, or pop out and buy something.” Anything to bring that sunny smile back. A trip to Clark’s—Sneezy’s—store was well worth it.

“Tea?” she asked. He nodded, and together they made their way toward the kitchen. At his insistence, she took her ease on one of the barstools, barefoot and gorgeous. Tranquil blue eyes watched as he prepared toast and set the kettle on.

“How did hurt your leg, Rumple?” the gentle question caught him off-guard. His reply was quick and light.

“Oh that. It’s nothing, an old injury. A messy encounter with a sledgehammer.”

“A _sledgehammer_?” Horror was thick in her tone, color draining from her face. At the confession, Rumplestiltskin felt lighter, freer. She had seen him at his worst and still said she loved him. His gruesome parody of self-sacrifice was hardly a drop in _that_ ocean. Rumple turned his back to her at the pop of the toaster. He hooked his cane over his forearm, a subtle shift of his hip against the counter compensating as he neatly buttered each slice. His hands shook a little. Might as well tell her the whole of it, he thought.

“Yes. A seer told me if I went to battle I’d leave my son fatherless. So I crippled myself to get back to him.” He shrugged.

“I was also a coward. My wife less than happy to be tied to my shame.” Silence. Rumple closed his eyes. If she’d left, he would understand . . . Slender feminine arms slid around his waist, the press of her ripe body against his back, her lips pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck.

“I’m sorry that happened to you. I wish I could have been there for you,” Belle said in a tear-choked whisper. Her breath was a warm, sinuous caress against his skin. Rumple closed his eyes at her words. Gods, he loved her so much. He covered her hand with his, squeezing.

“It was hundreds of years before you were born, love.” He strove for a light, dismissive tone and failed miserably. Tears clogged his throat. Belle stood on tiptoe to rest her chin on his shoulder.

“True Love must be a rare thing if you and I were separated by centuries. I am so happy I found you,” she said, rocking a little side to side as she embraced him. Rum’s laugh was almost a cry of pain.

“Rare, and powerful. The only magic strong enough to transcend realms and break any curse. I never expected . . . never dared hope . . .”

He turned, caught in a wave of tense, jittery emotion.

“Belle,” he rasped, drawn to her mouth, his blessing and reward.

With a soft sigh, she tilted her chin up to meet him. The kiss was as magical as their first, as passionate as their second, as tender as the third, but now held the tang of something else. _Desperation_. A hot, languid tangle of tongues, hot pleasure throbbing with every beat of his heart. Her fingers plunged into his hair, his nestled around her shoulders to draw her close.  She captured his lower lip between hers, suckling it with an obscene wet sound. He groaned, arousal pounding through his creaking body. She broke away, panting and he nearly whimpered at the loss of her hot little mouth.

“Belle?” he asked. _Tell me what I did wrong and I’ll never do it again. Please don’t stop._ The words flew to his lips. Her smile was quick and wobbly. She took his hands and reversed their positions, backing up against the counter. Swiping away the detritus of their aborted snack, Belle boosted herself onto the counter.

“This is better. For your leg, I mean.” His heart broke with love for her. What had earned him Milah’s contempt and would have earned Cora’s indifference, Belle simply _accepted_.

“I love you, Belle.” Small words, weak ones, however true. Belle dragged him close to feast on his mouth.

“I love you. Rumple. So much.” The words emerged staccato between greedy little pecks. Her legs wrapped around his waist, drawing him in. Gods, was she trying to kill him? Rumple braced one hand on the counter, the other finding the silken skin of Belle’s knee. He fell upon her, sinking into a drugged madness of kisses on her mouth, her cheeks, her chin, her throat, guided by the pressure of her hands in his hair. Her soft little sounds inflamed him.

“I want this. I want you. Even when I didn’t know my own name, I knew you’d keep me safe. I . . . I knew you were something I needed.” He suckled at her throat, driven mad by her confession of _wanting_ him. A shrill screech interrupted any further delicious madness. Rumple groaned, pressing his forehead to hers. The kettle whistled and Rumple snagged it off the burner. Sheepish, he turned back to Belle.

“Tea, love?” he asked. Her smile could only be described as sultry.

“Later. Come.” she offered her hand. Rumple challenged any man alive to refuse her. Their love was an unexpected quirk, as bright and beautiful and fragile as a rainbow. Belle, in her magnificent generosity of spirit, deemed him worthy of her heart. Rumple knew he would devote the rest of his existence to making her happy.

Starting tonight.       

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love.
> 
> Inspired by the song We Fall Apart, by We As Human. Great song.


End file.
